The Chronicles of an Alberta Girl Living in Toronto

International Women’s Day!

I love International Women’s Day. It makes me so damn happy that March 8th is marked as a day to celebrate and validate women. On the other hand, it makes me so damn sad that there is a need to set aside one day per year to celebrate women. One. Day. Per. Year.

I recently watched “Seeing Allred”, which chronicles the — highly impressive and incredibly inspiring — life of American women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred (if you didn’t know she existed prior to reading my blog, she’s the lawyer representing the women accusing Bill Cosby of sexual assault). Approximately halfway through watching the documentary, it hit me: it’s 2018, and we are still fighting for women’s rights. In my lifetime, it is doubtful that women will experience true equality to men. The human race is capable of shooting a Tesla into space, yet somehow it is not capable of acknowledging that women are equal to men (I hope you are simultaneously laughing and crying with me here).

(Note: while I definitely recommend watching “Seeing Allred”, I have to say that the point of view portrayed in this documentary is arguably very white and heteronormative; however, it is indeed the biography of a white, heterosexual woman. But seriously though, how are there documentaries about feminism that barely touch on intersectional feminism?)

When trying to decide what to write about for my International Women’s Day blog, I automatically gravitated towards sharing personal stories of how I have been mistreated as a woman. Every woman has these stories, and it’s infuriating.

Feminism is a powerful word. It scares people. It makes them uncomfortable, and in certain circumstances — such as the realization that there is a disparity between genders — it should be an uncomfortable word. But to me, it is also a happy word. The existence of the word ‘feminism’ shows that there is hope for change both now and in the future. It’s a word that women can stand behind and support each other with.

Celebrating your fellow woman doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. For example, my friend Hillary and I took a dance class to learn the choreography to Justin Bieber’s ‘Sorry’ (I know, I know, I’m rolling my eyes along with you- but trust me when I say it was SO much fun). Hillary and I took the class because we love to dance, and because we just wanted to have a fun girls’ night. We went into the class with no skills whatsoever, and encouraged each other each time we learned something new. We boosted each other’s confidence into the damn sky. The best part was when one of the other students came over to us, and told us that she adored our friendship, and how encouraging we were to each other. That was such a great moment.

Some really incredible ‘grand’ feminist moments can be found in this BBC article. There are certain movements that catch a lot of media attention, such as #MeToo, but there are so many more happening internationally that I was personally unaware of.

I could quite literally talk about feminism all day, and if you ever want to pick my brain, I will gladly oblige. For now though, I should probably finish up this post before I start rambling. So, again…